My Family: Chapter 35

Sometimes, after school I’d visit my girlfriend as her family was sitting down to eat dinner and if there was enough food, they’d ask me to eat with them.  If there wasn't I’d wait outside until they finished. Then I’d help do the dinner dishes so I could eat any leftover food. Sometimes there wasn't anything left, but I’d still help with dishes. My girlfriend’s dinners were like we have now, always different every day. Once I had dinner at another friend’s house and I didn't know what were eating, she told me it was meat loaf. Everyone I knew was poor but I just didn’t know it until I got into high school where I met a lot of different girls.  

I had to catch the school bus to go to school, our high school was in Logan which is fifteen miles away from our hollow. I wore Mother's orange jumper every other day to school and stole Shirley’s shoes. I must have gotten my own shoes later but I don't remember. I do remember I did go to one more year of school before I was sixteen and left. I never missed a day of school once I started high school.  One day a girl in my class asked me if I would have lunch with her and she would pay. We went to a restaurant. I was so nervous I didn't know what to order so I got the same thing as her - a tuna fish sandwich and a coke. I never had tuna fish before and was the best tasting sandwich I had ever eaten and I told her so. She wanted to take me to lunch again but I said no. She then asked me if I had supper the night before and even though I told her yes, I don't think she believed me. See, she asked me what I had for dinner and because I was embarrassed about just having beans and cornbread all the time, I made up a dinner that I read in my Health class. She said I was lying and I didn't have dinner like that. I asked her how would she know she wasn’t at my house. She never asked me what I had for supper nor does she ask me out to lunch again. 

While writing this I’ve been thinking I haven’t change very much since high school. I treated my co-workers the same as I treated my classmates - I had lunch and breaks by myself, nor did I talked to anyone. They used to call me stuck-up or say I thought I was better than them but the thing is: I was really afraid they would snub me. We didn’t eat like everyone else.  Most times I didn’t have a lunch to eat. And because we ate lot of chicken, I don’t like it now. When I was a child, we didn’t have turkey. Aunt Hannah use to say the meat was too dry to eat. I will eat a very small piece of turkey at Thanksgiving but only because it is a special day with my family.